It was a good idea to ban the uni entirely, cause that way they had to respond.
The entire idea of an academic (research) institution can be summarized as "an entity representing a group of trusted people who act in good faith of that institution". The moment one of your researchers acts in bad faith, or shows that they cannot be trusted, it's clear that the institute cannot be trusted until the institute takes decisive restorative action. By banning the University, you are saying "we no longer trust you in your authority as an institution until it can be made clear that this isn't a systemic problem."... you are not saying "every single person at the University is terrible" as it was framed by some commenters in the other thread.
This is why, in any broad case, it's so upsetting when an institution of any variety doesn't take clear responsibility for the behavior and actions of its members or representatives (take for example the police, or the federal government). When that is true, the behavior of any member of that institution should be subject to scrutiny and distrust. It's not a complicated social phenomena.
Although it isn't the medical profession, the same directive should apply to research:
"First, do no harm."
This deliberate poisoning of OS projects without prior permission to 'test the security' violated that big time.
I'm astonished it got past any ethics review, indicating to me that there likely was none.
"If a doctor commits malpractice, immediately disregard all medical advice given to you by any other doctors at their hospital"
Perhaps the hospital actually has excellent oversight and it is just that the evil doctor is exceptionally clever at avoiding it. But, Occam's Razor says that is a poor bet.
And the point of the reverts is that the kernel maintainers don't have the unlimited time that would be necessary to re-review all of these questionable patches for probable malicious underhanded C, so they are reverted for now for triage (not permanently).
For the linked patch, I would judge it possibly malicious as it leaves the identified vulnerability in the kernel for later exploit by the attackers, namely, the UMN research team.
I'm disappointed at seeing hackernews jump on this mindless mob justice like other sites would.
Having your patch reverted pending review is hardly punishment. Calling this mob justice is an insult to both mobs and justice.
edit: actually not even the develop I think https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210421130105.1226686-1-gregkh... It is just another branch? I am not familiar with the jargon